U.S. Push for Free Online Courses

This one is more of an informational item, as there is already a lot of commentary out there already on this issue.  It came through my Facebook with this item in my news feed:

Which links to a news item from Inside Higher Education.  It has also generated some discussion in the blogsphere, for example:

• Coming Dangerously Close from iterating toward openness
• U.S. push for free online courses from Virtual School News
• U.S. Push for Free Online Learning Courses – Inside Higher Ed from Online Learning Update
• you know as I have been saying entries over the past few days, I could have sworn I had more in my Bloglines than just these three…

Anyway, some things to consider – even in the K-12 realm, as I’ve often wondered do we realy need all of those different versions of Alegebra I and Alegebra II out there?  Couldn’t we just take the best from all of them and create one exceptionally well-designed course?

OHS: State Capitol On Thursday, 5 February from 1-4 PM

For any of my readers in Utah, this showed up my in inbox on Facebook from the Friends of the Open High School of Utah group there.

Open High School of Utah will be at the Utah State Capitol rotunda on Thursday, February 5 from 1:00-4:00 PM as part of Charter School Day. Stop by and say “Hi”!

So, if you are in town do stop by and say hi (and tell them you heard about the event from this blog)!

OHSU – Student Enrollment Cycle

This showed up in my Facebook inbox from the Friends of the Open High School of Utah group on Facebook.

Congratulations to all of the students accepted in the first round of admissions to Open High School of Utah!

Fortunately, we still have some room left for students interested in the amazing world of online learning. Our current enrollment period ends February 16. Please spread the word to students who will be in 9th grade next year that there is still time to apply to join us at Open High School!

Keep Learning!
Lynn

As always, more information about the Open High School of Utah can be found at http://openhighschool.org/

2009 Enrollment is Open!

This came to me in a variety of ways.  David posted The Open High School of Utah is now accepting enrollment applications! on his blog iterating toward openness (I should note he also posted this entry – Buckminster Fuller and the Open High School of Utah somewhat earlier which would normally have been included in my blogging about virtual schooling feature which should be coming up in the next week or so).

I also received this message from their Facebook group:

Everyone, enrollment for the Open High School of Utah is now open! If you know someone who lives in Utah, will be a 9th grader during the 2009 academic year, wants the flexibility of attending an online high school, the privilege of being loaned a laptop for the duration of their studies, and the freedom to forever keep a copy of all the curriculum materials s/he uses throughout high school, invite them to enroll today!

To enroll, head over to the website at http://openhighschool.org/

David

Open Yale Courses

You may remember a few weeks back I talked a little about open teaching (see What Would This Look Like In A K-12 Online Learning Environment?).  Anyway, I might ask the same question about this program that came through my inbox today.

I subscribe to the Chronicle of Higher Education’s daily update and today there was an entry on Curious About Game Theory? Milton? Yale Has a Free Course for You – which naturally got my attention cause I do have an interest in game theory.  The article was about the Open Yale Course initiative and you can visit the actual website for the initiative is available at Open Yale Courses.

Again I ask the questions…  How would this work in a K-12 setting?  Would it be worthwhile for the virtual school?  Would there be any benefits to the virtual school that would make this kind of this worthwhile for them to do?  What do you think?